You are your best coach | Sunday Observer

You are your best coach

20 January, 2019
It’s a cliché to say follow your heart, but in the end, this is the only way to be happy. Pic: Courtesy www.thenonprofittimes.com
It’s a cliché to say follow your heart, but in the end, this is the only way to be happy. Pic: Courtesy www.thenonprofittimes.com

Professional coaches are a useful resource. They may be experts in the area of the goal we are pursuing, such as a running coach or an executive coach, or they may just be an experienced sounding board to give a different lens on our problem.

But to establish patterns of success and consistently achieve our goals, it is helpful and more practical, convenient, and cheaper - to adopt some self-coaching behaviour.

Developing one is a process of transformation in which you ask yourself questions, you listen, think, decide and act - and then you do it all over again - as a never ending activity.

Always think about the content of your mind, listen to your body, and learn from the environment around you – and your reaction, or response, to it. We often speak of self-made people with hardly any formal education or training. They are the best example for the success one can strike with self-coaching.

Set yourself with a goal of achieving something, assess and see what areas you need to improve on, pursue new knowledge in that direction, develop skills you need to acquire, motivate yourself living with the feeling success can bring you.

As you assess yourself, you may well come up with other ideas of your own. Write them and make sure you use them.There is strong empirical evidence to suggest that goals and actions that are written are more likely to be reached.

The more you write about your goals, the greater your chances of success. The more closely you can visualise exactly what you want, the more likely you are to make it happen. This means not just daydreaming but visualising, imagining yourself really in the situation you want to make it happen.

There is no point in setting a lot of goals that you think you ought to achieve, if deep inside, you actually don’t want to achieve them. If you feel yourself resisting working towards a particular goal, don’t beat yourself up about it, but take some time and space to look at what is happening.

Why are you resisting? Is that goal what you truly want? Or what your parents or friends think you would want? It’s a cliché to say follow your heart, but in the end, this is the only way to be happy.

Positive self-talk

Once you have decided what you really want, focus on it. The focus sharpened by writing your goals, is what will carry you through to success - provided you remember you are focusing on a future reality that you are bringing about, rather than on some impossible dream.

The importance and value of positive self-talk cannot be underestimated. If you are constantly telling yourself you can’t do it, it will be exceedingly difficult for you to overcome this. If you believe you can do it, you can.

Coaching yourself is really about learning and expanding. Think of yourself like a sponge: How much can you soak up? Don’t just settle for reading and listening. Be creative and look for something that doesn’t exist. Ask for help from those who can help you? Your success depends on your willingness to put yourself out there.

Go ahead and schedule a standing meeting with yourself. Put it in your calendar. This is a must for accountability and structure. Open a notebook to keep track of your progress and to complete the exercises. And lastly, do something to move your life forward right now. 

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